


Vampire Protection

by sokrates_pupil



Category: Blood-Smoke Series - Tanya Huff
Genre: Gen, Magic, Private Investigators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 20:44:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16226999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sokrates_pupil/pseuds/sokrates_pupil
Summary: Tony gets his own back.





	Vampire Protection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



That first visit from ‘Victory’ Nelson had not been without…tensions; but it had also confirmed the foursome’s determination to maintain contact. For the last five years Vicki had visited Henry once every year, although that first trip by van had never been repeated. Instead she had flown in winter, when the nights were long. Where Vicki went, Mike went also. Three years ago, Henry had gone East, ostensibly to attend some writers’ conference, at the insistence – he said - of his publisher. However, despite staying in Toronto three days, after delivering one workshop, he had spent little time at the convention. And he had refused to stay in the convention centre, preferring a suite at the Royal York. His trip to Toronto had been repeated the next year, and the one after that. Tony had accompanied him each time, although, as his career was taking off it was becoming more difficult for him to get the time away as Henry’s trips, usually taken in late Fall or very early Spring, fell in the middle of the shooting schedule. He had had to suddenly fall ill with some mysterious malady to join Henry last time. 

_Darkest Night_ had gone the way of all flesh, which is to say it had been cancelled. It had had a good run: five years before the writers started repeating themselves and the viewing figures dropped. Lee had made the transition to working on the _real_ stage, having parlayed his popularity from the show into a permanent contract (or as close as anything passed for that within the entertainment world) with a Vancouver-based theatre group. The leads changed every few months as the company got in a new high-profile headliner; Lee always was given a good solid role backing up the protagonist. Once in a while he even got to act in the revival of something great (last year he played Iago). The work was harder, Lee said, but he was learning more. 

After vampire detectives became old hat, CB Productions’ next bid for popularity had been a local reality baking show. Chester Bane said he got the idea when he went on holiday to England and saw something called the Great British Bake-Off; but Tony rather wondered if Henry hadn’t had something to do with that. He had been making very pointed comments about Tony’s diet around the time Chester got his bright idea. Peter had sniffed at the idea of reality TV and left to direct a show in the States. The promotion to full Director had been Tony’s big break. However, the advent of the CBC’s Great Canadian Baking Show had quickly killed off the bakery programme which had swiftly been replaced by another cops and robbers show. It was a genre for which there was a perennial market. 

Tony sometimes felt he was living in a time warp. They were filming a scene in which the killer threw his latest victim off the roof of her apartment building just as Private Detective Stephanie Davis arrived. Female detective this time – not male. Plus, she had the powers of a sort of low budget Wonder Woman, rather than a vampire. But Tony could have sworn he’d done this before. Tony saw Henry and Vicki both out of the corner of his eye watching him closely as he set up the next camera shot. Yes – same old, same old…. 

Almost Tony resigned himself; but then he reminded himself of how _impossible_ they had been last time, each vying with the other to ‘protect’ him. This was what he had spent the last month practicing for. Behind his back Tony’s fingers twisted in a complicated pattern while he muttered a cantrip under his breath. Two vampires took to the skies, capes billowing behind them as they floated up, up, and _over_ English Bay. Capes indeed! Talk about taking themselves too seriously! They’d have a pleasant stroll across Stanley Park to Caio Bella where the five of them were supposed to meet once he finished filming this scene. 

Tony turned his attention back just in time to see the ‘body’ hit the detective’s windscreen. “And that’s a wrap!” he called through the loudspeaker. “Well done and I’ll see you all same time tomorrow!”


End file.
